I ran into this article and thought it would be helpful to the self-publishing writers out there. It shows that with hard work, great writing, and word of mouth, can get your book to steam roll into a stepping stone to the next step in your publishing dreams.
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Salem author self-publishes herself into a novel $2m payday
Email|Print| Text size – + By David Mehegan Globe Staff / With a draft of her novel completed, Brunonia Barry of Salem wanted to find an audience. But instead of chasing after publishers - often a discouraging task for any new author - she and her husband took a different tack. They published "The Lace Reader" on their own.
Then something amazing happened: Buzz exploded around the book, both online and in stores, and mainstream publishers came calling. In October, a literary auction was held, and Barry sold the book, and a future one, for more than $2 million.
It is one of the biggest deals ever for a previously self-published first novel and a vivid example of how old publishing norms have changed. Self-publishing was once a consolation prize for a pipe-dreamer. But today it's possible for writers such as Christopher Paolini, author of the fantasy blockbuster "Eragon," Richard Paul Evans, author of the bestseller "The Christmas Box," and Zane, whose first three novels were self-published, to bypass publishers, then score lucrative contracts with them once their books are proved.
As a novelist, Barry, 47, is a late bloomer. Raised in Marblehead, she spent years working with theater companies in Maine and Chicago. In the mid-1980s, she went to Hollywood to have a crack at screenwriting. For 10 years she worked on other writers' scripts but never sold one of her own. In 1995 she and husband, Gary Ward, moved back to Massachusetts, settling in Salem, where they started a successful game and puzzle software company called SmartGames.
Barry, called Sandy by friends, had always dreamed of writing fiction. In 2004 she wrote a pseudonymous short novel for Beacon Street Girls, a Lexington publisher of preteen fiction. Since 2000, she had also been working on a novel for adults, "The Lace Reader."
The intricate narrative centers on a young woman who has the power to read the future in the patterns of Ipswich lace. The woman returns to Salem from California when her beloved aunt dies, perhaps by foul play. As a local police officer becomes involved with her while investigating the case, a variety of characters embroider the increasingly strange mystery.
